Many products are individually packaged for sale to the ultimate consumer. Such prepackaged products, however, are typically shipped to the point-of-purchase retailer in bulk form--i.e., within their own shipping box. Of course, it is quite important for the product manufacturer to devise a shipping box which ensures that the prepackaged product will not be damaged in transit. It is also quite important for the product to be displayed in an efficient and aesthetically pleasing manner so as to attract consumer awareness. Oftentimes, the point-of-purchase retailer will physically remove the prepackaged products from their shipping box and place them on store shelves and/or in stacked island displays on the sales floor.
Those in this art have, however, endeavored to provide shipping assemblies which also serve as product displays at the point-of-purchase, as evidenced, for example, by U.S. Pat. No. 4,119,202 to Roth and U.S. Pat. No. 4,579,220 to Brundage. While the combined shipping and display assemblies proposed in the art are satisfactory for many prepackaged products, other products, such as prepackaged containers of flowable (e.g., fluid or granulated) product require special packaging considerations. It is therefore towards providing a combined shipping and display box which is especially adapted for use with prepackaged containers of flowable product that the present invention is directed.
According to the present invention, a combined shipping and display box is provided which is formed form a one-piece blank of box-board material configured such that, when erected, the box will include bottom, front and rear walls as well as an opposed pair of side walls. More specifically, the side walls are each formed from respective side panels having a central sub-panel and a pair of divider sub-panels extending in opposite directions from the central sub-panel. These divider sub-panels are inwardly foldable onto their respective central sub-panel along predetermined fold lines so as to not only be positioned in adjacent contact with the central sub-panel, but also to establish protruding interior dividers for the shipping/display box.
When erected, therefore, the terminal edges of each respective pair of divider sub-panels will abut one another such that each of the interior dividers is paired with a similar interior divider associated with the opposite side wall. In such a manner, therefore, the paired dividers will establish box positions adapted to hold a selected number of prepackaged product containers in a desired array. The dividers, moreover, protect the prepackaged product containers held thereby against movement (and hence potential damage) during shipping.
Further aspects and advantages of this invention will become more clear from the following detailed discussion of the preferred exemplary embodiment thereof.